Mr HobsonTeacher
by Tracy Diane Miller
Summary: This very short story was inspired by "Teen Angels."


Mr. Hobson...Teacher?  
  
Summary: Question- What is scarier than receiving tomorrow's newspaper today? Answer- Receiving The Paper AND having to pose as a substitute teacher in that "weird other dimension" known as high school. This very short story was inspired by "Teen Angels".  
  
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whoever created them. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made.  
  
Author's Notes: High School was NEVER this enjoyable when I was a student. And certainly, none of my substitutes EVER LOOKED THAT GOOD. Probably would have remembered my high school experience more fondly if they had (LOL).  
  
Author: Tracy Diane Miller E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com  
  
Mr. Hobson...Teacher?  
  
An intense fight between Cat and an unidentified stray like a territorial dispute between two hormonal felines, the consequences of which had turned The Paper into unrecognizable confetti, had led Gary Hobson to this moment. He swallowed hard.  
  
He stared out at the sea of faces. Those faces stared back at him as if he were some bizarre specimen to be dissected (or humiliated?) He wondered why he always ended up in some uncomfortable predicament courtesy of The Paper. High School...God, he hated high school! Well, maybe hate was a strong word. He liked the football games and he had nothing against learning (except for maybe the math classes and the boredom of Mr. Bancroft's English class). But he hated being called on in class or having to stand up in front of everyone reciting information that he had memorized the night before yet found himself stuttering his way through while all eyes were fixed upon him. He hated being the center of attention that always made him feel like a babbling idiot. And when you left high school, you left high school. No one in his right mind would voluntarily come back. Well, at least at this moment he was the teacher. Sort of.  
  
Piecing together The Paper after "The Kitty Wars" had proven a challenge. The pieces resembled a big jigsaw puzzle. He always hated jigsaw puzzles. He needed an expert on jigsaw puzzles to help him put Humpty Dumpty back together. Enter Henry Paget. Henry called it "fun" and complained that he was too slow. Fun...yeah, right. Reassembling The Paper after its date with disaster, realizing that lives depended on him when some crucial word or words were hidden amongst the chaos...sure that was fun, as much fun as having a root canal with a hacksaw! One big barrel of laughs! A few reconnected pieces revealed that there was going to be a shooting at Triton Preparatory High School and something about Susan Meyers' class. So he wondered the hallway looking for the class. When he ran into Principal Saunders, she mistook him for the substitute. Oh Boy. His first responsibility as a substitute was covering homeroom.  
  
Fortunately, there was one helpful face in the "herd", Arnetta, who told him that he needed to take roll. But a spoiled, disrespectful prankster, Rich Williams, had grated on his already frazzled nerves. The frenzy continued when he had to teach his first class- diagramming sentences. Oh Boy. He knew how to diagram football plays that was it. The participles would be dangling for a very, very long time if they depended on him! Yet, diagramming sentences was a piece of cake compared to teaching Hamlet. He had enough trouble learning "Great Expectations" even after Mr. Bancroft had thrown that book at him. Understanding Dickens was a snap next to making sense out of Shakespeare.  
  
And against the backdrop of assuming the persona of an educator, The Paper expected him to be a hero. There was still going to be a shooting unless he stopped it. How could he do that when he didn't know the who, what, when, or why, those crucial logistics that would mean the difference between life and death? Inside his paper bag of shredded pieces of The Paper was the answer, the key. He just needed to find it.  
  
However, finding the answer was soon made even more difficult. Having left the paper bag behind in an art class, he let out a distressed yelp when he saw that the pieces of The Paper were now the dressing of Arnetta's art project. Anxiety Attack Number Three, she called it.  
  
He called it Anxiety Attack...period!  
  
Later, he was lulled into a false sense of hope when he assumed that Coach Becker would shoot Rick Williams and he was successful in detaining the coach. But he was wrong. The Paper had changed and by a twist of Fate, Patrick turned out to be the intended victim. In the end, Patrick's life was saved. He had also managed to instill confidence in Rick encouraging the teen not to give up on himself.  
  
And he learned one final lesson from this maddening experience. A futuristic newspaper offered no instructions on how to teach, but taught him that heroics was a never-ending learning process.  
  
The End. 


End file.
